The Multiple Media Within the World’s Most Popular Medium: What Characterizes the Polymediality of the Mobile Phone?

• In Event: Top Ranked Papers in Mobile Communication II

Abstract

While the mobile phone is the world’s most popular media device, it is actually not one single medium, but provides an entire media ecology. As a result, it is effectively used as a different medium by different user groups. The article deepens our understanding of this polymediality by characterizing differences in mobile apps usage among different user groups, including gender, education, occupation, screen size, and price. We monitored the complete app usage of 10,725 smartphone users for one month each (56 million sessions, recording almost 1 million hours). We develop a theoretical framework to classify the over 16,000 apps used into five categories of polymediality. Testing a battery of 33 concrete hypothesis we provide a broad characterization of the mediatic nature of the cellphone by asking who, with which characteristics, uses which kinds of apps in what extensity and intensity? For example, we find that the the mobile phone is used as a traditional human-to-human communication medium by women and the higher educated, while men and the less educated see it rather as an entertainment medium. Rather surprisingly, it is not the young and high occupational grades that use the mobile phone as a human-to-machine computer (including gaming and artificial intelligence tools). Large screen size is related to extensive long sessions, while a small screen size is related to intensive frequent usage. The results provide ample empirical evidence that any aggregated treatment of the mobile phone as a single medium will miss its inherently polymediatic nature.

Authors

• Martin Hilbert, U of California at Davis

• Ashwin Aravindakshan, U of California - Davis